CaliberCos Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Caliber's second quarter 2024 earnings call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded for replay purposes. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Lisa Fortuna, Investor Relations for Caliber. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Caliber's second quarter 2024 financial results conference call. With me today are Chris Loeffler, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder, and Jade Leong, Chief Financial Officer of Caliber. Please note that we have a quarterly earnings presentation, which will serve as a supplement to today's prepared remarks. You can access the presentation on the investor relations section of our website at www.caliberco.com. After management's commentary, we will open the call for questions. As a reminder, the information discussed today may include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Words like expect, believe, and anticipate refer to our best estimates as of this call, and there can be no assurances that these will actually take place. Our actual future results could differ significantly from these statements. Further information on the company's risk factors is contained in the company's quarterly and annual reports and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Chris. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Lisa, and thank you to everyone joining us on the call today. I'd like to begin our discussion by first thanking our employees, vendors, and partners for their dedication to Caliber. In May, Caliber initiated some cost reduction measures that are a key component of our plan to return our business to operating profitably. These measures have required many members of our team VENDORS AND PARTNERS TO TAKE ON ADDITIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES, SOMETIMES WITH LESS RESOURCES. THE ENTIRE TEAM HAS RISEN TO THE CHALLENGE, AND I'M GRATEFUL FOR THEIR TREMENDOUS EFFORTS. THEIR DEDICATION HAS HELPED US TO ADJUST OUR COST BASES TO A LEVEL THAT COMBINED WITH OUR PLANNED REVENUE GROWTH, WE EXPECT WILL RETURN CALIBER TO POSITIVE EBITDA IN Q4 OF 2024 AND POSITIVE NET OPERATING INCOME IN 2025. AS WE CONTINUE TO SHARPEN OUR FOCUS ON INCREASING REVENUE, Caliber has set three priorities for revenue growth. The first priority is to acquire more income generating real estate investments. The real estate market has seen a significant drop in value from its most recent valuation peak. And we believe now is the time to acquire attractively priced assets. Prior to this change in real estate values, we did not see the same opportunities we are seeing in income generating assets now. To begin, We intend to close on our first $1 billion of assets in our planned roll-up of the Caliber Hospitality Trust, or CHT. So far, we have seven hotels in CHT, with a total estimated AUM of $234 million. We expect to close the next eight hotels by the end of 2024, bringing the AUM of CHT to $410 million. We are pleased to announce that we have signed a definitive term sheet with an institutional investor that we expect will bring $35 to $65 million of preferred equity to CHT, which will provide the funds necessary to acquire these eight assets. The agreement is subject to customary closing conditions and diligence requirements, and we look forward to updating you on our progress. The roll-up of CHT will mark a significant change in the composition of Calibers AUM, with a sizable portion of the portfolio being income-producing hotels. To further bolster our income-generating AUM, Caliber has taken action on a program to provide an elevated experience for 1031 exchange investors seeking quality income-generating assets. We believe Caliber provides a solution for a persistent challenge for investors seeking a quality partner to complete their exchange, and we look forward to sharing more as this program develops. Our second priority to accelerate revenue growth is to provide more single asset investment offerings. We believe we'll be able to attract more investment capital in this format, and we have a series of projects ready to present to investors seeking to build their wealth with real estate. Additionally, our discretionary multi-asset funds can act as a lead investor in the single asset offerings, providing the multi-asset funds with a first look at each caliber of project investment. After seeding our new funds with more assets, we expect the multi-asset funds will be better positioned to attract capital from our wholesale channel. Our third priority is what we call build what we own. While this priority may sound obvious for a real estate investment company, it is not always the case. Caliber along with what we would estimate to be most companies investing in land and development was impacted by a very disruptive cycle of events between COVID, inflation, ongoing challenges in the banking system, and the rapid rise in interest rates. With this drastic change in market conditions, we took a hard look at our projects to reevaluate whether any changes to our plans were warranted, a step we believe is prudent for all real estate investors. In completing our review, we found the path that we expect will lead to the most potential value creation for our clients and for Calibert to be that of a continued course to complete our developments according to our revised plans and build what we currently own. An important consideration in our analysis is that many of these development projects sit with little to no secured debt, offering traditional financing as the best potential path to capitalize their completion. In many cases, all or the majority of the equity required for the projects has already been raised. Our developments are also located in strong markets with resilient demand, giving us confidence in leasing. Financing is critical to achieve Caliber's revenue generating priorities, and because of that, I would like to make some observations about the current financing environment. As a real estate asset manager, financing comes to Caliber in several forms. The first form of financing is what we call fundraising, which is equity capital, preferred equity, and convertible debt raised from Caliber's clients and partners for our funds and for our real estate projects. Today, the ongoing market conditions around fundraising remain challenging. We are focusing on things within our control to enhance our fundraising capabilities and expand into new target areas despite these conditions. Caliber's target market for fundraising includes over $13 million.